And see, I don't think 9:30 is early at all, and I don't feel the last text from R that night required a response. I guess that's an agree to disagree there.
But NO ONE's alarm went off. Not the mom who didn't get responses to her texts. Not the grandmother of the boy he was supposed to be visiting at 6:30 in the morning. Not the dad who left his kid 20 miles from anywhere yet wasn't surprised that he wasn't waiting at the house or within yelling distance when he came home. And that's why it's possible to conclude that this is not unusual behavior for Dylan. That behavior being to NOT communicate to other people's expectations and to NOT always be where he said he'd be when he said he'd be there.
There's a coulda-woulda-shoulda feeling to this. It doesn't help find Dylan, but it does provide a message to other parents IMO, about reinforcing expectations about phone use.
What would help Dylan at this point? LE giving out positive indicators of where to search. In this radius from the house or in that direction. Or a full description of what's in the backpack, because that backpack could have disintegrated over the winter and items spread all over the place by animals or come bubbling up to float on the surface of the lake or washed ashore. A make/model of the cell phone in case it's found by the side of the road somewhere, turned in at a lost and found at a store or sold on Craigslist.
Granted they don't have manpower to comb through all the area but they could give some information out to help with organized searches and to alert people visiting the area.
